My two cents, even though Im sure most of this has been said somewhere in this thread:
- Collins decided to space himself as far as he could from the Triple option for recruiting purposes. He was trying to get the stigma of 3O and GT football as far away as he could. Truth is that the 3O of course, as most of us know, is easy to negatively recruit against since the pros don’t run it and every player coming out of HS dreams of playing in the NFL. So everyone wants to play in the cookie cutter offenses we see in todays college/pro game.
- I don’t blame Collins for trying to distance himself from the past decade, but I don’t think his approach was the best in some of the ways he described it. It would come off at times like an insult to the previous staff and players which is why it rubbed some people the wrong way and you are now seeing fans/ex players/coaches respond to that when Collins has fallen on his face.
-despite how it came off at times, I don’t think Collins doesn’t respect Paul, and I’m sure he thinks he is a great coach, but Collins had a hard time finding a way to pave his own path while paying respect to the last staff. I think the better way he could have said things was, “Paul and his staff did incredible things here and had great success, but I have a different vision and plan for what I want to do and where the program is going and hope to have similar success as Paul and hopefully get GT football into the playoff picture etc”
-since things have gone south for 3 years, Collins has to eat all of the mess he has created for himself. He is ultra positive and ultra hype, and when there’s not a lot of positives and no hype left, not sure what he has left to do with himself.
-He needs to basically reinvent himself and how he views things. Be realistic when talking to the media, accept you need to hire people that make you better, not your buddies who kiss your butt everyday. Realize it’s ok to say “we didn’t play well, guys didn’t give the best effort, if guys are not giving 100% or can’t execute what they are coached, then I will play guys who will, etc” you don’t need to profess your love for everyone 24/7, if you really love the guys as much as you say, you don’t need to constantly say it, the players will already know that. When you say it constantly it comes off like an insecure guy who thinks his wife is always thinking about leaving him and has to reassure himself constantly or something.
-lastly, I think he has to win at least 7-8 games next year, I don’t think even 6 is going to cut it at this point, the fan base is way too far gone. He is going to have to have a monumental bounce back season to get people to respect him again.